Quest Digest 15/1/96 From: ">>-Josh->" <J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 ___ _ / _ \ | | Mid January, 1996 | |_| |UEST__| |IGEST \__ | / _ | | |_ | |_| | An e-mail discussion forum for the fantasy |_ / \___/ play by mail game; "Quest". Compiled by Josh Gallagher. J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk o This isn't one of those automatic list thingies, so could all articles be sent clearly marked with paragraphs initalled to me. o If you want off the list, just say! No hassle, no pressure. o All material here is the exclusive property of the author and may not be used elsewhere without their permission. o For answers to specific Quest-related questions, you may want to get in touch with the Quest Helpline; queries sent to quest-help@kokodan.vivi.com will be sent to a panel of experienced Quest players, who will endeavour to answer your problems quickly. Thanks to Bruce Cota for his help. ___ / _ \ Hello and welcome to another Quest Digest, and sorry it's | __/DITORIAL late (insert standard student complaints about work load and \___| how it clashes with good solid drinking time). I would have been able to offer you all precise instructions as to how to get hold of Chris Clarke's wonderful Quest FAQ (version 2!), but... um... I seem to have mislaid both the FAQ and the instructions. Ho hum. Gives you all something to look forward to next time anyway! There's plenty to read in this one as well, being 11 days of cumulated responses from (I guess) people returning to university and so on after their Christmas break. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jim.Sparshott@jet.uk Date: Fri, 05 Jan 96 13:38:29 GMT JIM - I've always considered myself to be a very lucky player, ever since I started playing Quest nearly three years ago. That was until, this morning when it seems, all the bad luck that has'nt happened, happened all at the same time. JIM - I'd like to tell you all what has happened and to ask the question 'Can anyone beat this for a bad Quest week?' JIM - Before Xmas, I sent off a turn for each of my two groups. And I can only assume, that because of the delay in the postal system, my processed turns turned up in my second home after I had moved back to my first home for the Xmas break. Unfortunately, both my groups ended up one sector outside cities and remained there whilst I partied Xmas and the New Year away, at the mercy of anyone. JIM - To cut a long story short, my G16 group (Jim Reapers(1865)) were attacked by an evil alliance, headed by the previous owner of the group when they were known as 'Guys that go Haggar', and suffered eight dead (4 voided or engulfed, 4 killed in action). JIM - If that were not so bad, my G14 group (Jims Social Defects (1143)) which was over 140 turns old was completely massacred by the famous Black Knight Alliance, with 15 dead. All I got was a shitty message from KJC telling me that my party was as lifeless as my underpants, and they even charged me for the privilige! JIM - I shall soon be starting up a new party in G14, so watch out BKA! Theres a mean mutha funker on your case. JIM - If anyone would like the remains of my G16 group, then give me an E-mail. They are currently: 1 fighter 2 priests 64,66 sk 4 mages (1 good, 2 crap) Theres also a very good dead mage which can be ressurected. There is just one condition on this transfer of ownership however. I'll tell you what it is later! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 20:28:29 +0000 (GMT) From: "Rogerio Fung < Rapa >" <l41186@alfa.ist.utl.pt> RF> Just would like to know if there are any parties that you wish to give away....my party in G1 in BdS has 57 turns, and is the best in there... It sort of feels strange to start all over again... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 8 Jan 96 13:35:32 GMT From: Dave Rees <chaos@thanes.demon.co.uk> DR> I fought 8 Monks of Fleyshur last turn, I Globed one and fought the rest over 3 rounds of combat: Missile fire IOT1 12 * Injury, 5 * Lightly hurt. (All short bows) MoF No hits. Monster spell casting MoF 1 * Lightly hurt (Magic Dart) Round 1 IOT1 13 * SW, 3 * W, 1 * LH. 1 dead MoF 3 * W, 4 * I, 7 * LH Round 2 IOT1 10 * SW, 2 * W, 3 * I. 4 dead. MoF 2 * W, 1 * I, 4 * LH Round 3 IOT1 6 * SW. 2 dead MoF No hits. IOT1 1 BW, 10 LW. MoF 8 dead EXP = 1326. (JPG> Took me a while to figure out all the acronyms there. :) Apart from some characters not hitting, this was a superb battle. The most damage suffered was 30 hp's on a DP. Tough as you like. DR> Temple Quest rewards are now becoming unrealistic. I have seen with my own eyes a TQ for a dragon 18 sectors away. Yes thats 3240 / char. And it was completed with a Globe. This is redicularse. His last 3 quest have grossed nearly 7000 gps / character. Even he agrees that it's got out of hand. Something has to be done to lower the rewards, otherwise game life will drop dramatically. DR> Nice new upgrade that most of you may not have seen, is that the recruiter now gets a list of all new groups entering the game. Excellent. 14 new groups have joined G14 in the last two turns. A long overdue improvement. DR> Some of you may be interested to know that Hewlett-Packard are introducing a new colour printer-copier. No? Well you may like to know that HP are lending people one free of charge for a whole week. Hewlett-Packards' address is : Hewlett-Packard Limited Cain Road Bracknell RG12 1HN They say the offer is open to anyone so good luck. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: j9452689@wlv.ac.uk (J.Spencer) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 16:46:43 +0000 (GMT) As a new player any help here would be great!! Is the money-lender 1000 gold limit per character or per group??? And what is the punishment for not repaying??? Thanks! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 10:46:00 +0000 (GMT) From: Allan Hooper <A.O.Hooper@herts.ac.uk> > >SA> MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!!!=20 > PN> HURRAH, AND A HUGE DRUNKEN SELEBRATION TO Y'ALL!!!!! AH> BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP! ;) > DR> There are unfortunately. It's far better beating the crap out of a 15 > member group than killing 6 out of 6. Sadly, any group now not NA is a fair > combat target. I take on the largest group I know in a city and then work > down through who I know. This way I hope this gives enough time for any player > with a small group to get out of town. And one name in particular springs to > mine. AH> Since town battles dont show up in newspaper reports perhaps introducing an "Events Between Turn" bit like below might help:- "During the night we were woken by the sounds of battle as the Chaos Forge fought the Dream Weavers in the streets." AH> This would alert weak groups that there are fights going on so they can leave town if they want to. Maybe even town spell castings could be reported in this manner too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 13:36:02 +0000 (GMT) From: Rodrigo Fung <l42729@alfa.ist.utl.pt> Something on the behalf of Change World... I believe the main purpose of a Change World spell/service is so that if a party is bored in the current game (e.g. too few parties, no battles, etc) can go to a more interesting games where the action takes place and therefore more fun. I think it could be implemented as a new very powerful spell (Mage skill 99) or a Travel Service. As everyone knows KJC recently announced that each game of Quest is like an Island in a big world so a travel service would be logic, of course the cost of the journey would be a huge amount of gold, like 10.000gp for each character would be a reasonable price. When your party arrives at the new game you would be assigned a new party number for that game only, if you returned to your older game you would still have your old number back. Conclusion you would have a 'private' number for each game visited so that you can always prove who you are. Let's face it names change every time but party numbers are for life. From where to where could you go? Well, I think that you would only be able to travel one time at time. No such things as parties from game#1 buy a journey to game#10 without pasing through all the in betwen games... making it very expensive and therefore no big impacts in game turnarounds. The turnaround impact problem! Well in all games there is always powerful parties, there would be just one more... and in my opinion a party after it reaches its 100 turn is pretty much the same as a party with 150+ turns (Note: I said prety much...) in the end it all comes to wheter you know ho to play or not. Besides at the cost of 10.000gp per char, making 150.000gp for a powerful party who will be constantly moving around from game to game? And think a bit... wouldn't it would be better to spend all that money in improving your party instead of moveto another game? Basically the price would dictate who would be willing to move to another game (it always come up to money). I think, as I said, that the only reason for a party to move is when the gam where it currently is no longer provides fun for the player. Take some games for and example, some Quest games are dead, games where when you are at major cities you don't find other parties? Is it fun to play in such a game? No! What to do? Start another party in another game? But what about all the money and time spent in my 300 turn party? This is when Travel Service to another game enters. Lots of things have been done to keep new players in the wonderful game of Quest, now it is time for KJC to do something for old players keep interested in the game. Rodrigo Fung of the Moody Cows(1667) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 08:50:12 GMT From: thomas@enterprise.bt.co.uk (Roy Thomas) RJT> Does anyone know how KJCs turn order correction system works? RJT> I tried to create food since I only have 24 rations left, but they cocked up the order, so that I tried to BUY item 99 from shop 902. Then they said that this order must be wrong so they changed it to BUY from shop 0. C 14 902 99 got incorrectly inputted to B 14 902 99 got corrected to B 14 0 99!!!!! RJT> Is this a purely automatic thing or is there some manual intervention involved. It would seem to be the former! RJT> PS. Does anyone know how to kill a Sleech? Do I have to cast a death spell, or can I fight it to its demise? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: list_s@svhdev.bt.co.uk (Stuart List, PST PP201, Tel. Ipswich 293433) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 16:33:31 +0000 My group is currently trying to defeat a Jinx. However, they are not having the success they would like. As normal weapons are useless against these creatures, they are casting spells only. However, the mages are only level 4 and most of the spells they know have no effect. The priests have found that Ythcal's touch works, but only occasionally. Does anybody have any idea why? Does anybody have any other ideas on how to defeat it? Magic dart does work, but has little effect (or so it seems). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 10:00:30 -0600 From: Erling Solheim <solheim@james.avh.unit.no> >PN> Indeed, I am more interested in Kharne Politics than thou, but to denie me >such an oportunity is a travesty! To avoid combat when you were so blatently >hostile is.... bloody annoying!, especislly as in the open field I'd have >mashed y'all up - into 4 chars at the very least!. Do you understand? ES>NO, I'm norwegian. We don't have the words "mashed y'all up" in our vocabulary. Does it mean something like "we might have hit you one or two times before attaining the title R.I.P?" I might be wrong on this one, the translation I mean, but as the NA came at the time it did, we will never find out. It doesn't >matter if you have a different attitude now, then you were willign to bash >everyone (eeven very young groups!) and everyone, but now your not willing to >fight anyone! ES>Yes, thats absolutely correct. You probably don't know that my group in fact was both smashed and trashed in it's younger days. I specially remember the time I by accident bumped into a group named Immortals, that had 15 members, was a lot older etc. At that time I had started to recruit characters for 1000 gp each, and I lost three of these characters in this fight. After that match I had a neutral attitude for a while, until I again started to get mad about all those chatting monsters that exchanged greatings instead of being sent to their Gods by my party of berserkers. >>different aspects of the game, and I think the problem about the NA-order >>and group vs. group-fighting is that KJC haven't programmed the game so that > >PN> Attempt to deny that you enjoyed almmost destroying the Hairy terrorsts?! ES> I have never enjoyed beating up those who are smaller than myself, have you? >Happy Chribo and all that! ES> thanks the same. ES> I managed to kill 5 monks of Sundonak, and I had no problem of hitting them after casting flame. They seem to have up to 4 attacks each every melee-round of combat, but they took only abot 6,5 points of damage on each hit. They also seem to have a very good initiative, as they in all the combatrounds hit me many times before I could hit back. As I fought them as part of a TQ, they will give me 27000 gold, thats 1800 per character, a nice sum. When the melee started one of the monks was seriously wonded, and the four others lightly wounded. I still got 751 experience from the fight. The area I found these monks in was also crowded with monsters, and KJC seem to have programmed into the game quite a lot more monstergroups. Around a village there were monstergroups in almost every sector, let's say I found about 10 monstergroups in one turn, either met during the turn, spotted around my party, or shown on the map. I saw someone mentioning that strength training should be free for alliance-members. I disagree on this one, as many players wont be in an alliance to take part in this anabolic feast. ES> This voting for new things to be added into the game of Quest isn't a bad idea. Why not simply make up a long list of sugestions, with a number to each sugestion, and then let people vote for the 5 sugestions they think they would like to see in the game (each player having 5 voting points that could be used, either on one sugestion or perhaps scattered on 5 different sugestions). I numbered all my sugestions, so why not continue this list with other players' sugestions, and then send out the full list of sugestions in one article, and then everyone could vote before a final set date. JPG> The vote we did last year had perhaps too many suggestions to get sensible results from. Even giving everyone 20 points would mean spreading it thin, and then some will put all 20 on one idea. The amount of ideas that get voiced is quite amazing, so there needs to be some way just to obtain the top 5. See below for more... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 19:41:33 GMT From: Paul Noble <editor@elbon.demon.co.uk> PN> I have just finished a spreadsheet which once filled in with the group details shows the development of skills and stats. It is quite simple really, but I find it rather useful to show which characters can go to what skills/aw/To's. PN> It is made in MS WORKS (PC) so their should be plenty of other types of spreadsheets that will have filters for it. If anyone wants a copy I could mail it to them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 09:54:50 +0100 From: Rolf Semb <Rolf.Semb@amo-rud.no> RS> I was wondering if there are anyone here who are playing in the excellent Game numba 8. If there is anyone who wants to join the excellent alliance, THE CURSE OF VASHANKI, then mail me. We can offer everything you already have heard of, and a bit more. Contact me for more info. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- JPG> Ah! Alliance adverts over the net. :) That's what I wanted to see over a year ago when I first posted in rec.games.pbm advertising my game 11 alliance. The reaction was... well... there wasn't a reaction. :) Which was why I advertised there to ask if there was _anyone_ playing Quest out there... and now here you all are, close to 100 on the list together with those who read it on the newsgroup and those who get forwarded copies. JPG> Anyway, enough reminiscing. This votes business is something I think we should try and get underway quickly. I have a suggestion, and it goes like this: JPG> Send me your top 5 favourite ideas, either taken byte by byte from a previous digest, or suggestions of your own. By the next Digest I should have enough to give you an initial list (probably tagged on the bottom) of which are the most popular ideas, and this should help you pick ideas that you agree with. JPG> Remember, the more popular the suggestion the more likely it is to be implemented. JPG> Eventually there should be a quite sizable list, such as Erling's the other week, Chris Dickson's last year and various others over time. The list will be numbered, and I'd appreciate it if all ideas were kept to a description of one, possibly two (but no more!) lines. If you wish then, you can just send the numbers of the ideas that you like most. No picking the same one several times; it unbalances things. A summary: o Your top five favourite ideas o Short one or two line descriptions o No point system - giving more than one point to one idea o In a seperate email if at all possible JPG> I guess that's it for the moment! Thanks to everyone for the contributions, keep them coming in. Apologies again to Chris for managing to lose her FAQ. :( Happy Questing folks! >>-Josh-> "But I still haven't found what I'm looking for..." - U2 Up